I'm sure my statistics/math/politics is lacking something, but why isn't a third-party vote instead a -1 to both primary candidates? Is it naive to consider the vote of each registered voter as a potential gain for each candidate that is removed in the case for each name not chosen? We might as well say that everyone who voted outside the bipartisan menu as good as skipped the polls entirely.

I'm basing this on the idea that each candidate wants my vote, and by giving it to the one I support (in this case a third party), I've made the total for both primaries one vote smaller.

If you vote for one of the leading candidates, sure, your vote has delta 3 (but the -1 to the trailing candidate is basically irrelevant, because he can't win anyway).

If you vote for the trailing candidate, then from the perspective of the leading candidates, you have effectively zeroed your vote (you haven't given +1 or -1 to either candidate who can potentially be elected).

But going so far as to say one is stupid for doing so is too far.

Sure - I personally do not vote at all, as a protest against the broken system.

But he is correct that you are throwing away your vote. Just so long as you throw it away knowingly and intentionally, I don't see a problem with that.

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But he is correct that you are throwing away your vote. Just so long as you throw it away knowingly and intentionally, I don't see a problem with that.

That depends on what the goal of my vote is. The goal of my vote was to hopefully hit 5% popular vote for the libertarians. That goal failed, but I don't think it was an unrealistic or idiotic goal to have.
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It's a fine goal, but an electorally irrelevant one. It indicates a long term objective which is orthogonal to the election itself, and which will have no effect on the outcome of the election or what follows. I wouldn't say that it's a waste of a vote, but I would argue that a vote is a pretty ineffective tool for achieving your ultimate goal (I'm assuming that that would be something along the lines of promoting libertarian participation in politics). If you don't care who wins, that's as good a use of your vote as anything else.

Chris Matthews, as a committed partisan, looks at your vote as a strategic element in choosing between the two candidates in the race that had a shot at winning. A vote either supports his candidate or, by doing anything else, hurts his candidate by at a minimum denying your support. I'm not on board with this frame, but since the point of an election is to pick a winner I'm less open to the argument that a vote isn't a waste because you have a non-election related goal.

I tend to think the main stream media is a large part of the problem, and I think it's important to call it out when major mis-steps are made. The, "who cares," attitude doesn't benefit anybody. I appreciate that you aren't from the US, so you may rightfully not care, but, in short, I do.

American MSM is almost treated as comedy over here. If we got worked up about every idiot on American TV....

On topic though, do you have some form of preferential voting?
In Australia, the minor parties can basically redistribute the "useless" votes that are given to them to their preferred major party. This gives minor parties a lot more power/relevance, because the major parties will have to undergo some form of policy negotiation with them if they want to receive their "preference votes". It also lets the picky voter have a lot more of a say in what their vote means, as they can specifically choose the order of their preferences instead of defaulting to a particular party's preference order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting

On topic though, do you have some form of preferential voting?
In Australia, the minor parties can basically redistribute the "useless" votes that are given to them to their preferred major party. This gives minor parties a lot more power/relevance, because the major parties will have to undergo some form of policy negotiation with them if they want to receive their "preference votes". It also lets the picky voter have a lot more of a say in what their vote means, as they can specifically choose the order of their preferences instead of defaulting to a particular party's preference order.
http://en.wikipedia....t-runoff_voting

Nope. Your vote influences who gets your state's electoral votes, and then that's it-- it's gone.

My goal is to get a third party on the ballot in every state with federal funding. If you have a better tool for achieving said goal than try to get the 5% popular vote required for that I am all ears.

I don't. But while your casting that vote is a necessary part of achieving that goal, it's nowhere near sufficient. Activism to get a lot of people to cast similar votes is probably the route I'd go, organized around each specific election. Casting a third party vote without a big organized push seems to me would be as effective in getting to 5% as it is in actually electing the candidate.

Besides, the 5% rule is about being reimbursed, so any third party still needs to have the money in advance to get on the ballot and have a shot at capturing that much of the vote. And it has to keep getting at least that share of the vote every time to keep getting reimbursed. I have a hard time seeing something like this happening without the party being formally established and having a fairly reliable voter base first, which would require organizing in advance of casting votes.